1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to sharing data gathered via user interfaces operating on different communication channels, such as web and telephone channels.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many businesses with a large number of computer system users provide customer service call centers to assist with computer system problems experienced by the users. Customer support may be provided by various vendors of computer software and/or hardware, by in-house personnel, and/or by a professional computer system support organization.
Examples of the types of computer system problems that a user encounters include being unable to connect his or her computer system to the Internet, launch a particular software application, send and/or receive e-mail, print to a particular printer, and so on. However, when the user telephones the customer service call center, the user often must wait for a long time for a customer service agent to become available. The customer service agent may not have the expertise or the right tools to solve the problem. Furthermore, the computer user often lacks the technical expertise to adequately describe the problem or to gather information needed by the customer service agent to fix the problem; thus, the telephone experience can be frustrating for both the computer user and the customer service agent.
Because providing customer support is very expensive, the efficiency of customer service agents is paramount. Some technical support vendors, such as Motive Communications, Inc. (“Motive”), provide call-center products that can automatically fix problems that users may have with their computers. These call center products can include a client software component installed on a user computer system and a server software component, running on a server in data communication with the user computer system via a network. The server software component directs the client software component to gather diagnostic information relating to a problem on the user computer system. Rather than telephone a customer service agent, users can use the client software component that connects with the server software component to diagnose computer system problems. Using some automated call-center products, such as those provided by Motive, the user may search a database of help information and, if desired, connect to a live customer service agent for further assistance. Motive products also provide for diagnostic information gathered during the user's search to be electronically forwarded to the agent, greatly enhancing the customer service agent's ability to diagnose the problem.
While these automated call-center systems solve the problems of automatically fixing computer problems and/or communicating electronically gathered diagnostic information to the customer service agent, many individuals are not confident about their knowledge of computers and are reluctant to use such automated call center software. Furthermore, computer users that do have automated call center software sometimes still seek help from a customer service agent via the telephone. Often the computer user prefers to have an agent provide guidance via the telephone while the user navigates the self-service application. However, requiring an agent to assist the user with the self-service interface partially defeats the purpose of providing automated self-service software, i.e., to reduce the time that agents spend on the telephone so that more time is available for diagnosing technical problems.
A solution is needed that encourages users to adopt self-service assistance with computer system, equipment and service problems. The solution should facilitate the use of multiple communication channels for gathering information by providing coordinated user interfaces and guidance for using the coordinated user interfaces.